The subject matter herein relates generally to cable assemblies for a cable backplane system.
Communication systems, such as network systems, servers, data centers, and the like, use large printed circuit boards, known as backplanes, to interconnect midplanes, daughtercards, line cards and/or switch cards. The communication systems use high speed differential connectors mounted to the backplane and high speed differential connectors mounted to the line cards and switch cards to transmit signals therebetween. The backplane interconnects the various connectors using traces along the circuit board.
As the density of the systems increase and requirements for high speed lines increase, the printed circuit boards continue to become larger and the signal integrity inherently degrades as the signals travel further along the entire channel. At least some systems have replaced the traditional backplanes with cable assemblies. However, packaging of large numbers of cable assemblies is difficult. Cable management is a limiting factor in such systems. Current cabled tray designs utilize a dense cabled structure that is difficult to assemble due to weight and size constraints. Additionally current cabled tray designs do not allow end users to configure the trays to meet with different system architectures. The cabled trays have one pre-specified configuration and the connectors held by the cabled tray are all fixed relative to one another. Due to such constraints, the density per linear inch of differential pairs of contacts held by the connectors of the cable assemblies may be negatively impacted, and therefor the system architecture can be negatively impacted. For example, less space may be available for other hardware components within the system, such as power supplies, system airflow components, and the like.
A need remains for a cable backplane system having design flexibility for the end user.